


My Tears Ricochet

by Umbr_el_on



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ashelix Week (Fire Emblem), M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Star Tears, Vision loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27169526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbr_el_on/pseuds/Umbr_el_on
Summary: For, surprisingly, the first time since his ordeal began, Ashe wailed. Panic rippled through his body as the gravity of his loss poured over him. He knew he was going blind, but not being able to see Felix again? Not seeing Felix’s smile lines or crow’s feet or crooked teeth one more time? That cut Ashe in a way nothing else ever had, leaving him raw and broken and hysterical.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26
Collections: Ashelix Week 2020





	My Tears Ricochet

The burn in his eyes was nothing new. A symptom of his perceived abandonment, Ashe sniffled and glared at the once again empty side of the bed he shared with Felix. It had been cold for days now, and Ashe had begun to fear the chill was its new permanent state.

Felix’s missions took longer and longer each time now. Ashe assumed the worst, that Felix’s supposed outings to fight and take on mercenary work were veiled visits to another lover or even just to escape from Ashe. It only made sense, now, given how uninterested Felix had grown in the relationship they’d once shared. Something broke along the way, and Ashe was too slow to find and fix it. A part of him couldn’t grasp that years of domestic happiness had fallen apart like this, but the reality of the situation was too suffocating to ignore.

Cut to his soul by his own thoughts, Ashe grunted and pounded his fist into the space where Felix should be. The pain behind his eyes sharpened, and Ashe covered his face with his hands. Crying felt less shameful when he could hide it, even if it meant dealing with wet, tacky skin after. He slumped forward, ignoring the cold air that ticked his skin as the blankets fell away, instead focused on trying to force his pain out. He froze, paralyzed with emotions and focus until something hard landed on his palms.

Jerking his hands away from his face, Ashe stared down in confusion at the shiny, deep blue pebble sitting on the sheets in front of him. It looked otherworldly, catching more light than the room seemed to have. It looked round at first glance, but the longer Ashe stared, the more apparent the jagged edges became. How it hadn’t ripped up his eyes, Ashe didn’t know, but he was thankful the sting hadn’t been worse.

Drawing a cautious line down his face with a rough fingertip, the lack of moisture drove Ashe’s alarm to a new level. He’d heard of this ailment before. Its existence was passed around like a secret while he was at the Officer’s Academy, but assumed it was made up.

He’d also assumed his emotions were under better control.

Shuddering as another tiny crystal escaped his eye, Ashe was faced with the most horrifying question he’d confronted in years: had Felix fallen out of love with him? That’s what these tears were, a symptom of unrequited love. Ashe didn’t know exactly how it worked, but did these little crystals mean that one of his worst fears had come true?

Just the thought of what the answer could be made Ashe feel sick. Retching, he ran to the bathroom on unsteady feet as the world spun around him. More tears clattered to the floor, leaving a trail from the bed to the toilet. The musical sound they made as they fell would have been beautiful if Ashe didn’t know what it meant. Every chime was a reminder that Ashe was or felt left behind and unwanted by the one person he didn’t think he could be whole without.

Over the sound of losing his last meal, Ashe heard the bedroom door open. A fresh wave of agony swept over Ashe at the unfair timing. He heard Felix’s heavy steps come into the room and then stop, felt the way he froze to assess the situation even through the wall. Closing his eyes and clinging to the toilet, Ashe slowly righted himself. With a sense of unbearable detachment, he opened the door. Felix’s eyes, betrayed and enraged and exhausted, greeted him.

“Who is it?” Felix hissed.

Ashe was thrown off-kilter by the question, grounded back into himself enough to feel the sting of the question. “Huh?”

Felix threw his bag on the floor, crushing some of the tears in the process. “Who is it? Who comes here while I’m gone that’s got you like this?”

Ashe’s eyes widened as he pieced together Felix’s question and a few more tears forced their way out. “Gods, no one! No one comes here, Felix, I–“

“I’m not an idiot, Ashe. You obviously have feelings for someone and they don’t return them. That’s what these tears mean,” Felix snapped, kicking at the tears on the floor and glaring at them as they scattered.

“I just miss you! You’re gone so much, it’s like you’re not–“ Ashe tried to answer, but his voice was small and fragile.

Felix’s scoff was enough to make Ashe stop. Ashe wrung his hands and looked at the floor, terrified. He felt something very deep and very real shift in the room. When he looked up and locked eyes with Felix again, he felt a distance they’d never had before. It felt like Felix was gone.

“Felix…” Ashe whispered, feeling more tears forming along his waterline.

“Save it,” Felix said, broken.

Felix turned and exited the room before Ashe could attempt to say anything else. As the exchange settled in his mind, Ashe’s legs gave and he crumbled to the hardwood floor. Felix’s departure carried a sense of finality with it that left Ashe gasping for air, clutching his sides as he curled in on himself.

* * *

In the two weeks since the tears began, Ashe had only seen Felix in passing. Each encounter left him cold, cowering under Felix’s brief, harsh glances. The chasm between them was wider than it had ever been, feeling truly impassable in a way that Ashe struggled to comprehend. It was as if they’d become entirely new people, carrying with them pain and separation neither of them remembered creating.

If he hadn’t been preoccupied in another way, perhaps Ashe would give more of himself to pondering the distance separating him from his partner. He could put his youthful optimism to work, do the emotional heavy lifting to seek a solution. Felix never did have much skill in that regard, so this would be the natural place for Ashe to take charge and push them towards something better.

As it were, Ashe was a little distracted by his rapidly deteriorating vision.

The unforgiving edges of the tears slowly built up damage on his eyes, leaving him with a sense of helplessness. He’d turned to archery to steady his frazzled mind, much as he did during the war, but even that blanket of safety was slowly cut away by the bits of starlight that forced their way out of Ashe.

When he finally shot a round where none of his arrows hit the target after a long stare down across the courtyard with Felix, Ashe knew he had little time left before his vision was taken entirely.

That realization was what led him to the bedroom. It drove him to strip down to his underclothes, tossing them aside into a messy pile as he sat on the edge of the bed. Resting his elbows on his knees, Ashe lowered his head onto shaking hands. Rough fingers caught and twisted in his silver hair, creating prickling pain that grounded him, if only a little. The sensation matched the prickling in his eyes, a warning sign that a new wave of beautiful fragments were due to tear their way from Ashe’s broken being. With a shaking breath, Ashe braced himself for the pain.

What he got instead was the bedroom door opening. Looking up, Ashe could tell by the voice that Leonie was there, speaking firmly to Felix. Before he could properly tune in to hear what she was saying, she shoved Felix into the room and slammed the door so hard they both jumped. While Ashe curled in tighter on himself with Felix hovering closer than he’d been in weeks, Felix tried to open the door and escape. When testing the handle failed, he took to slamming his palms against it.

“Damn it, Leonie! This isn’t going to help!” Felix growled.

“Neither is whatever you were doing before!” Leonie called back, her tone so firm even Ashe felt like he was being reprimanded.

Felix shouted in frustration and let his head fall against the door with a solid thud. Ashe’s throat felt too dry for words. The only sound in the room was that of Ashe’s tears shattering on the ground. The twinkling must have irritated Felix because he whirled around after a moment and fixed Ashe with an irritated look.

“Still haven’t figured out your mess with whoever this side piece is, I see?” Felix spat, eyes narrowing to watch a tear fall.

Ashe was too frozen to respond. As he sat there, looking at Felix, he realized he couldn’t see him clearly anymore. The navy of Felix’s hair looked flat, as though the color of it had begun to drain away. His sharp jaw looked fuzzy in Ashe’s scarred gaze, the angle of his nose unidentifiable. The shape of his eyes blurred, their state of openness indicated only by the blob of amber Ashe could still make out. He couldn’t see Felix.

For, surprisingly, the first time since his ordeal began, Ashe wailed. Panic rippled through his body as the gravity of his loss poured over him. He knew he was going blind, but not being able to see Felix again? Not seeing Felix’s smile lines or crow’s feet or crooked teeth one more time? That cut Ashe in a way nothing else ever had, leaving him raw and broken and hysterical.

“So, looking at me makes you that upset now?” Felix scoffed.

Ashe couldn’t respond through his troubled breathing and shaking head. This was wrong, so very wrong. Didn’t Felix know he was all Ashe wanted? Was their love so fragile that Felix could assume they were broken and doomed so easily? Ashe made a choked sound and thrashed on the bed, desperate to release any of the energy his body insisted on feeling.

He was stilled when Felix grabbed him and looked at him, expression blank to Ashe’s unfocused eyes. Just the smell of Felix, cinnamon and sweat, forced a small measure of comfort to take hold. When Ashe looked at Felix, still shaken at how different he looked, Ashe quieted enough to listen.

“What’s wrong?”

“I… you… I can’t see… you look different and I….” Ashe struggled, every word edging him back towards panic.

Felix lingered for a second before he pressed on. “What?”

Ashe snapped. “Why didn’t you listen to me? There’s no one else! B-but you didn’t believe me, didn’t give me a chance, and now I’m going blind for you and you don’t even care!”

Felix rose to the accusations Ashe flung. “Going blind for me? What, like I’m not right here?”

“You’re not! You leave for missions that drag on longer and longer. You don’t look for me when you come home and you don’t tell me when you leave. It’s like I’m just an ornament for you to leave in Fraldarius as you please,” Ashe sobbed, making a song of the twinkling sounds behind his confession.

It seemed he got through to Felix in some way, if the hug Ashe was wrapped in was any indication. Felix’s body shook in time with Ashe’s as they sat there. It was the most comfortable Ashe had felt in weeks, maybe months, as much as he didn’t want to admit it.

Felix whispered, vulnerable and soft in a way Ashe knew was reserved for their hushed conversations. “I should have done better. You’d never go this far to pretend.”

Ashe laughed and allowed himself to let it be bitter. “You think?”

Felix winced but didn’t retort. “I love you, Ashe. I hope you love me, too.”

“I do.”

“Then where did the tears come from?”

Ashe let go of a heavy sigh. “Felix, you weren’t showing me you loved me. I wasn’t sure you did. That’s when this started, when I doubted.”

Felix was quiet for a long moment. Ashe let him have it. He knew Felix was just processing the information; that was a heavy load to put on anyone, but Felix would take his time with it and reply when it was time. Ashe anticipated it would take days, but Felix spoke within minutes.

“I fucked up, and you paid for it. I’m sorry, but I know I can’t fix it.”

Ashe sobbed once more, but the ability to muffle the sound against Felix’s chest made it feel more bearable than before. “Just don’t let it get worse, please.”

“I won’t. You deserve my best, and this isn’t it,” Felix whispered into Ashe’s hair.

With a whine, Ashe felt an especially large tear escape him. The multicolored crystal landed on the bed between them, catching Felix’s attention. He held it up to the light and inspected it before pocketing it. Ashe assumed it would be a reminder to Felix to rededicate himself to their relationship.

Ashe felt the gap between them close, if only the tiniest bit.

* * *

Ashe huffed as he held up bottle after bottle of seasoning, giving each one a quick smell to try and find the rosemary. Someone had shuffled things around in the kitchen, and Ashe couldn’t read the labels to find where everything was moved to. Even amongst the bottles with green contents, there were a lot of other things to sort through. His plan to cook dinner for Felix was falling apart, at no fault of his own. Cursing, Ashe set his hands on the counter and let his head fall.

“Do you need help?”

Ashe turned to face Felix in the doorway. Offering a lopsided smile, he nodded. Stepping aside, he gestured to the array of containers open behind him.

“I was trying to make dinner but the spices were out of order. I need rosemary.”

Felix hummed in understanding as he walked forward. Ashe watched as Felix located the herb in question, handing it over for Ashe to add to a pan of vegetables. Even Ashe could see the vibrant colors inside, admire how the peppers and carrots and celery blended together into a colorful mass.

“When that has a few minutes it can be unattended, please come into the dining room.”

Felix sounded stiff when he spoke, matching the awkward shuffle of his steps. Something was on his mind. A flash of anxiety overcame Ashe as he worried they were facing another crisis. Even with a year gone by, Ashe still struggled to hold his confidence in them. Perhaps that was what prompted Ashe to pull the pan off the stove and walk out not a moment after Felix had.

When he emerged, Ashe found Felix kneeling on the ground. He could make out something in Felix’s hands, but not much more detail than that. Puzzled, Ashe tilted his head.

“Did you drop something?”

“No, but you did.” Felix paused, and Ashe heard him swallow. “You dropped dozens of painful tears over my miscommunication, and you still deal with that damage today. For that, I will always be sorry. But I ask for the opportunity to have the rest of our lives to make up for that mistake and show you the best of myself like you deserve. Ashe, will you marry me?”

Ashe flung himself to the ground, pulling Felix into a hug as he cried. Wet tears rolled down his cheeks and fell quietly to the ground. Felix wiped them away with a gentle thumb as Ashe nodded his head.

“Yes, Felix, I’ll marry you. I want to share my best with you, too.” Ashe could barely speak through his tight throat, but he managed.

When Felix put the ring on Ashe’s finger, Ashe wasted no time in touching it to get a better idea of what it looked like. His fingertips found sharp, uneven edges. Along with the multicolored shine of the object, Ashe let out a gasp.

“Is that…” Ashe started.

“The last tear. A reminder of what we’ve been through.” Felix explained.

“Felix–“

“If that’s too painful, I can have the stone replaced,” Felix said quickly, squeezing Ashe’s hand.

Ashe shook his head and smiled. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

Felix exhaled, and Ashe cuddled against his now-fiancé’s body once more. Ashe’s smile widened as he admired the inky color of Felix’s hair, vibrant once more as the last stages of Ashe’s damage receded with healing.


End file.
